


follow the sound of your heart

by taeyongsan



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Romantic Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 07:15:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27189904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taeyongsan/pseuds/taeyongsan
Summary: Yuta hears a gentle, kind voice in his dreams and he feels the gentle, kind love in his heart. And he knows that at the end of it, there is a gentle, kind person it all belongs to.
Relationships: Lee Taeyong/Nakamoto Yuta
Kudos: 53





	follow the sound of your heart

**Author's Note:**

> What a surprise I am posting this today. (Or is it?)
> 
> Happy birthday to Yuta and I hope he knows he is loved by many today and every day. And now... have a small soulmate fic!
> 
> This is an accompaniment to the short soulmate fic I wrote earlier this year! No need to read that one to understand but it shows Taeyong’s side a bit more, if you’re interested… now onto the fic!

Growing up, Momoka was too curious for Yuta’s liking. She spoke too much and too loud, never allowing Yuta to think quietly for a second. She had so many questions and their parents tripped over themselves to answer them in a way that satisfied her. But she never was completely satisfied with the answers she got.

Mom, what does this do? Dad, what does that do?

It was always this and that, why and where, and how… Yuta cried once or twice when he was younger, so exasperated with hearing his sister’s voice go on and on about something she was curious about. Still, Momoka was not scolded. No, Mom and Dad would never scold Momoka for wanting to learn more. They encouraged it, even when her questions went beyond their own knowledge. And as tiresome as it could be to hear her voice for hours upon hours, Yuta had known that somewhere, there was someone who enjoyed it.

Momoka meeting Yukio hadn’t been too much of an occasion. Yukio had been the transfer student from another school, which had brought some excitement to the realization that he was Momoka’s soulmate, but not many of their classmates had cared for seeing them get together. Yuta knew Momoka imagined a dramatic event but seeing how awkward and quiet Yukio was very quickly brought down her expectations, not that she was unhappy about it.

His calm personality was most attractive to Momoka, as Yuta had been forced to hear many times. And as the months passed, Momoka’s outspokenness became what Yukio loved most about her. (Yukio didn’t need to tell Yuta for him to know―not that Yukio would ever say anyway.) 

Yukio wasn’t all that outspoken himself, making him and Momoka quite a pair to come across, but her chattiness made up for his lack of words. And after meeting each other, Yuta noticed how much Yukio balanced out his sister. His calm, pleasant voice seemed to pull Momoka back a little, easing the overwhelming excitement of her words and smoothing the sharpness of her strong personality. It made Yuta wonder if Momoka played up the talking so Yukio could hear her all this time.

But this wasn’t about Yukio, as much as Yuta loved him now. This wasn’t even about Momoka.

Yuta himself could be talkative. Like in many things, he ranked right in the middle of the Nakamoto children trio. Momoka was the most talkative, Haruna was the least, and Yuta fell right in between them both. Depending on the environment, he could be the quiet kind of person or chatty and loud, matching Momoka’s overwhelmingly optimistic energy. And he wondered which version his soulmate had come to know him as.

He wondered what would happen if he spoke even more, taking notes from Momoka’s behavior growing up. There was no telling if such things worked but it could be worth a shot. The voice he heard was so calming, so quiet and gentle, much like Yukio’s and he heard it in fleeting moments, barely catching onto the words he managed to hear. There had always been a sweetness to this voice that Yuta couldn’t describe. But as sweet as it was, he could tell that it was not a girl.

The first time he heard the voice, so many years ago when he was still a child, he could almost imagine the person who it might belong to. But now, he wasn’t all that sure who it might be. Yuta knew his voice had changed. He was getting older and the sound of his voice had seemingly changed overnight this past summer. And it had happened to his soulmate as well.

Yuta had counted six times he heard his soulmate’s voice in the nine years he’d known of it. And now…

Seven.

The way he had woken up with a jolt and a small, wordless yell of surprise was enough for his mom to come and check in on him. She was still up, making their lunches for the next morning. There was a worried expression on her face and she wiped her hands on her apron, coming in and sitting on the edge of Yuta’s bed.

“Are you okay?” she asked, bringing a cold hand to his forehead.

Yuta nodded, still a little dazed.

 _I think I’m ready to meet you._

He had a rising suspicion that his soulmate lived in South Korea or was Korean. Yuta had realized it was the language they spoke in after recognizing a few words he’d learned through listening to Korean artists. But then… he’d heard some easy phrases in Japanese. And now this one. So simple but very effective in making Yuta’s heart thump hard in his chest.

“Yuta?”

“I’m okay,” Yuta finally answered. He looked at her, seeing how much older the worried expression made her look. “I just had a dream. I heard… It was him.”

She seemed taken aback, pulling her hand back. “Him?” she asked carefully. Yuta blinked a few times and his mom shook her head after a second, her bangs swishing across her forehead. “Say, Yuta, why don’t you write down what you heard? Come, come.”

Yuta rubbed at his eyes and his mom smiled, brushing her hands through his hair.

“Write it down and then rest,” she whispered, patting his cheek. “You have a game tomorrow, right?”

She got up from his bed. Yuta acted quickly.

He had stopped needing his mom to comfort him like he was a little kid. He no longer sought out to be babied by her. But he felt like a little kid, shaking and scared. He grabbed the sleeve of her sweater, holding her back. She turned back to him in surprise but her expression softened. Her other hand fell atop his and she gently tugged until he let go of her sweater.

“Please don’t tell Dad yet,” he whispered, his voice shaking a little. “I’ll tell him after my game, I promise.”

“There’s no need to be worried, honey,” she said, sitting back down and pulling him into an embrace. “Dad will understand.”

* * *

_It’s okay to not always have the best day._

Yuta blinked a few times, looking around. He was alone in his room, of course. He heard Momoka through the wall, singing along to some idol song, and the voices of his mom and Haruna could be faintly heard from the living room. His gaze moved down to his homework, his mind not quite processing the numbers and equations he’d been working on seconds ago.

_I think we had a good day today though._

Quickly, Yuta flipped to an empty page and wrote across it, mouthing the words to himself as he did so. “It’s okay,” he murmured, dropping his pencil onto the notebook, “to not always have the best day.”

He admired the sentence for a moment, smiling to himself. After a minute, he laughed, loud and happy. Yuta had a good day. Classes went well and practice went well. They were getting closer to his birthday and Momoka had let it slip that their parents were preparing a nice surprise for him. A good day… even better now that he had these words with him.

“I think we had a good day today,” Yuta quietly agreed.

Moments later when Momoka burst into his room, asking why he’d laughed, he brushed her off, shooing her from his room, but was not all too bothered when she decided to stay and take residence on his bed, poking and prodding with questions about this and that.

“Yuu-chan, you seem awfully happy,” she said, stretching her leg out to poke his arm with the end of her foot. “Why’s that, huh? Huh? You heard something, right?”

“ _It’s okay to not always have the best day_ ,” Yuta said slowly, carefully pronouncing each syllable. He looked at his sister and was pleased with the frown on her face.

“What’s it mean?”

“I’m not telling you,” he said. “Get out of my room.”

He laughed when Momoka picked up a pillow from his bed and tried to hit him, begging him to tell her.

A good day, he thought.

* * *

_I hope you had a nice day. Eat well and sleep tight._

It was too much of a coincidence, Yuta thought. He wrote the words down in his notebook carefully, remembering the way his soulmate had said it. So softly, quietly.

Yuta hadn’t had too good of a day. He set his pen down and flipped back a few pages, running his fingers over what he had written before.

_It’s okay to not always have the best day._

Kind, Yuta thought. That was the kind of person his soulmate was. Even if the words weren’t for him, they were nice to remember when he needed them. Whoever his soulmate was, he was a loving person and someone who was probably a bit more sensitive. Yuta had heard it time and time again in his words. His soulmate was thoughtful. It made Yuta want to meet him even more.

He read over each thing he’d written, all things his soulmate had said once before. Such random phrases strung into a beautiful paragraph filled with gentle encouragement and love that settled over Yuta like a warm blanket.

For the first time that day, Yuta smiled.

* * *

I want to meet you.

“Yuta, if you go in hopes of finding him and you do, you have to stay there.”

“I know,” Yuta answered.

I want to meet you.

Yuta had said the words over and over again, night after night for years now, hoping that through some miracle, the person on the other end heard him. Who knew if he would hear it, and if he did, Yuta wondered when he would hear it. Yuta had learned that his soulmate could hear his words hours or even days after he had said them. He hoped his soulmate didn’t hear his words too late. He knew that his soulmate’s words were delayed because when Yuta was asleep, he heard the short and quick sentences and questions about lunch and homework, some after school activities. And he was also certain that his soulmate lived in South Korea now because of these instances.

“There’s no coming back, Yuta.”

The topic of leaving Japan had been an issue with his parents. His dad had been a bit wary about letting him go and his mom even moreso, both of them concerned about him living alone in another country. He’d studied enough, he told them, and he had done all the work he needed to do. His application and entrance exam for the university of his choice were done. He was nearly there.

“I know, Dad,” Yuta replied. He let out a loud, heavy sigh. “But I’m sure of this. I’ve been planning for two, almost three years. I know that we’re close to meeting. I just… have to go. I hear his voice more and more these days.”

Dad looked a little sad. “I know you’re sure of this and there’s no changing your mind,” he said, reaching out and clasping Yuta’s shoulder. “We can’t hold you back any longer, I know.”

“Dad…”

“It’s not fair to make you feel guilty, I know that also,” Dad said. He sighed and squeezed Yuta’s shoulder. “But Momoka has Yukio, and Haruna has met Tarou-kun. It’s not fair to keep you here when you’re meant to be there.”

“I won’t stay there forever,” Yuta tried.

“Let’s save the words of comfort for Mama, yeah?”

“Aniki!”

Yuta turned away from his dad, the hold on his shoulder disappearing as his dad stepped away to greet one of Yuta’s cousins who managed to come to the party.

“I’m so sorry you’re leaving. Aniki, we’ll come to see you when we can.”

“Tarou-kun, you can’t say that,” Yuta laughed, throwing an arm around him. Haruna was on the other side of the room, eyeing them carefully. Yuta didn’t know how to reassure her that he wouldn’t scare her soulmate away. If anything, Yuta was doing everything possible to keep him in the family, not that he would leave in the first place. “But if you can, please come to visit. I’ll come back during summer breaks, just a couple of weeks. Yukio is in charge but once he goes to Tokyo, it’s you, right?”

“Of course!” Bright, excited eyes met his, a million questions behind them. “Are you excited to finally go? Or nervous?”

“Both, of course,” Yuta answered. “But more excited than nervous.”

“I would be. Wow, you know… Haruna and I were lucky to meet at this age. I know it’s hard for other people, and impossible for others, but you’ve never been the kind to be held back by the impossible. Right, Aniki?”

“Tarou-kun, you can stop with the aniki,” Yuta said, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from laughing.

“But you said―”

“That was a joke, you know? Oh man, you’re sense of―”

 _I’m moving to Japan._ Yuta froze and beside him, Shotaro stopped as well, a confused expression crossing his face. He said something but Yuta didn’t hear it, couldn’t hear it. He looked over his shoulder but found no one. The voice sounded like it had passed right by him. _I want to meet you now._

“Tarou… go help Haruna,” Yuta said suddenly, blinking a few times and processing where he was. At home, in the living room, surrounded by friends and family that were saying goodbye to him. He had a ticket to South Korea for tonight. “Go, hurry.”

Shotaro looked concerned but let Yuta be, going to Haruna and pulling her aside. Her gaze moved to Yuta. Despite being younger, her worry for Yuta was like that of an overly concerned older sister, something perhaps Momoka should be. Before Haruna could make her way over, Yuta moved.

He made his way through the group, half-heartedly thanking and greeting those that tried to start a conversation with him, murmuring an excuse of needing to do something. He stepped into his room, closing the door behind him and leaning against it.

“Don’t,” he said to himself. “Don’t come, not now. If you’re listening, don’t leave. I’m coming to you. I’m here.”

He repeated the words until a knock surprised him. He jumped away from the door and it opened, revealing Momoka. She stepped inside and closed the door quietly.

She stayed silent, just standing by the door and staring at him, a calm expression on her face. In his entire life, Yuta had never wanted Momoka to speak more than he did right now. At this moment, he needed her to say something, anything, because she was the only one who could keep him from being alone with his thoughts.

Finally, she spoke. “Sho-chan said you were acting strange. You know, he always has so many nice things to say about you. Yukio gets a bit jealous, but don’t let him know I told you. Anyway, imagine my surprise when he tells me and Haruna you’re being super weird. And the expression on his face was strange as well. You worried him, you know? You’re going to have to apologize. How could you give Sho-chan such a bad impression on the day of your departure? When he l―”

“Nee-san,” Yuta breathed out.

Momoka froze. Yuta rarely referred to her as such, even if she is his older sister. And then he began to cry.

* * *

The moment Yuta realized that he wouldn’t meet his soulmate in school like his sisters had, he had thought about how they would meet. He’d seen many movies about people meeting their soulmates. His mom loved those kinds of movies. He was rather indifferent to them but he wondered if people could really meet that way. Bumping into one’s soulmate at a coffee shop or brushing shoulders in a crowd as one crossed the street seemed a bit dramatic and unrealistic. Life was much duller than the movies.

Still, he’d heard the stories from his friends and family. Even if the meeting wasn’t romantic from the start, Yuta had heard this was this familiarity that one felt when they came across their soulmate. It was like two ends coming together, two pieces of a puzzle falling into place. Finally whole. Finally complete.

And scanning the eyes of this crowded place, Yuta was searching for something he’d never seen before but was familiar. There was a voice calling him, finally here at the same time and place, waiting to meet him. He’d waited so long. They both had.

“ _Where are you?_ ” Yuta asked, turning around once more.

His mom was nearby with Haruna, carefully watching. He could feel their stares on him but he couldn’t be bothered to look in their direction, not when he was so close.

“Where are you?” The voice was crystal clear in his ears. He heard it above all the sound. His chest ached, his heart asking to be reunited with the other half of it. And finally…

Two brown eyes met his and Yuta knew. It was like looking into the eyes of someone he’d known his entire life, and Yuta knew that in previous lives, this person’s soul was who he was with. With so many lives their souls had gone through, there was bound to be something familiar.

“You,” Yuta said.

He felt breathless. It was exhilarating. And something pushed him to move. Yuta was a straightforward person but he never imagined he’d be this way with his soulmate. He imagined something shyer. Though there was some shyness in the way he wrapped his arms around his soulmate, he felt a surge of confidence move through him, thrumming in his veins and bringing him to life.

There were so many thoughts running through his head. He couldn’t pick one thing to say and he wondered if there was anything to say. He held on tighter. It was real. He was real. He was here. Yuta had found him. The person whose words he heard in his dreams, whose words were filled with love that was genuine and kind. 

Yuta exhaled. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he whispered finally.

“I’m sorry,” the words came. They were muffled from how his soulmate’s face was pressed against his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

And Yuta had never heard those words come. There was nothing to be sorry for, Yuta wanted to say. He had done nothing wrong.

When Yuta finally pulled back, he took a good look at his soulmate’s face. He was pretty, very pretty. His lips were pink and they matched the color that bloomed across his cheeks. His eyes were round and cute, holding so much emotion and seeming to twinkle. His dark hair fell right over his eyebrows and by one of his eyes, Yuta noticed a small scar, its shape indiscernible to him this far. All of this made up the person he was going to love, the person he had learned to love already.

“My name is Yuta,” he finally said.

Hearing his name repeated so many times amazed him. It amazed him so much, he couldn’t help but interrupt. Feeling soft lips against his, breathing in the last syllable of his name, was something entirely different. There was no describing it. This person was not only careful in their words but in their actions as well. There was a tenderness that made Yuta feel like he was where he was supposed to be, safe and sound in the presence of this stranger.

When they stopped, Yuta smiled. Their noses bumped and he finally let out a small laugh, pulling back. “And you are?”

“Taeyong.”

“Taeyong,” Yuta repeated, and the smile that crossed Taeyong’s face was one Yuta would never forget.

* * *

Yuta loved Taeyong’s laugh. It was a funny, cute sound, just a bit breathy. And Yuta found that he loved Taeyong’s expression when he laughed too. The way his face scrunched up was very endearing.

Another very endearing thing about Taeyong was the way his hand always found a way to hold Yuta’s. Days after their first meeting, as they sat beside each other at a park, speaking about their childhoods, Yuta noticed how naturally Taeyong had reached for his hand, holding onto it and running his thumb across the back of it.

“You know, I always thought meeting in a park would be fun,” Taeyong said as their conversation winded down to silence. “Like people meet in the movies.”

“You like those kinds of things?” Yuta watched as Taeyong’s cheeks turned pink and he avoided meeting his eyes.

Taeyong huffed out in embarrassment. “Doesn’t everyone like those kinds of things…”

Yuta smiled. “You’re right.” He sighed and looked up at the sky. They’d spent hours here and now the sun was beginning to fall over the horizon, the clear blue disappearing and giving way to a mixture of oranges, pinks and purples, with a dark navy high above them. It was pretty, like Taeyong, Yuta thought. “Everyone thinks about those kinds of things.”

“You did?” Taeyong looked at him with curious eyes. The setting sun’s light made him look unreal, the colors painting his pale skin, making him almost glow golden.

“Of course.” Yuta smiled. “Dreamt of it even.”

This made Taeyong laugh and Yuta hoped he could make Taeyong laugh many more times in the future, just to see him this way. He wanted to make Taeyong smile and see him happy. Yuta wanted to be the reason why Taeyong was happy because he knew how much happiness Taeyong’s words had brought him before they met. 

“Are you happy with the way we met?” Yuta asked.

“I am happy,” Taeyong answered immediately. There was a confidence in his voice that Yuta liked. “No matter how we met, I would’ve been happy. Since it’s you.”

Taeyong’s words were always kind in Yuta’s mind. And seeing Taeyong say such things so genuinely with his own eyes filled Yuta with warmth.

Of course.

“As long as it’s always you, Yuta.”

Yuta knew that they would have this life together and in the next, he would find Taeyong’s soul as well. The warmth that Taeyong’s soul had would always bring Yuta to him, no matter where or who they were. It would always be them, following the words they heard and finding each other once again.

“It will always be you, Taeyong.”

**Author's Note:**

> Here's where to find me and send me messages!  
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/taeyongsan) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/taeyongsan) | [tumblr](https://taeyong-san.tumblr.com/)


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